I had it in mind to tag Echo and Observation Rocks on this last trip to the area (the road closes on Monday) and invited my buddy Craig along. He badly needed some fresh air and a little lung busting as he hasn't hiked for two years and is still battling bronchitis. Despite some coughing in the first few hours, he held up amazingly well on this loop hike which didn't include Echo and Observation.
Small World: the people parked next to us recognized Craig from being in my 2007 DVD, and a couple of cars down I spied Tigermn and Bootup by the incredibly bright orange shirt and yellow gaiters. I popped over to say hi before they departed. We then set off for Knapsack Pass but I got sidetracked by the Mt Fay trail for sprint number one, as Craig was doing fine but wasn't up for tagging the peak. I redlined all the way up and ran back to minimize the time he had to wait for me, then we proceeded to Knapsack Pass, me glad to kick back and recover to match Craig's pace as he was still getting his cough on. We then sauntered across the boulder field and eventually met up with the Wonderland, but by now too late for me to sprint all the way to Observation, it would have been very selfish of me to leave Craig for that long so I'll save it for another day. We stopped at the intersection for some chow and water refill from a nearby tarn and lingered for quite some time as the skies gradually cleared somewhat and revealed some blue, backdropping the lenticular show provided by the mountain. When we reached lower Spray Park I did a much shorter but equally redlined sprint up the obvious trail to the Mt. Pleasant saddle, snapping some pix and running back down before Craig could become crotchety from having to wait too long. The rest of the day was on the easy boulevard of the WT back to Mowich Lake, arriving before headlamp time. It was the perfect day, lots of laughter, not too hard, not objectionable weather....it was good to see Craig back on the trail and his cough was noticeably absent the latter part of the day. Nothing like fresh air, sarcasm, theme based jokes and general banter to cure the coughing crud! Photos in no particular order.......
Great photos of the clouds!
Looks like there was some interesting weather developer around Rainier today. I've also seen photos from today in MRNP where everything was in the clouds the whole time!
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